Military Recruiting Woes

[unhappycamper]

Was autistic man really a Marine? Military court to decide
Posted on Friday, October 28, 2011
By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Los Angeles native Joshua D. Fry had been diagnosed as autistic and was living in a group home for people with mental disabilities when a Marine Corps recruiter signed him up for service.

Fry's enlistment three years ago helped the recruiter meet his quota. It turned out far worse for Fry, who ended up being court-martialed on child pornography and other charges. Now his fate is posing a mind-boggling question for military judges:

Was Fry never really in the Marine Corps in the first place?

Citing his autism and a reported IQ of 70, Fry's attorneys say he lacked the mental capacity to enter into an enlistment contract. If they're right, it means that Fry wasn't a Marine even while attending boot camp and infantry school. He always was a civilian, immune to military prosecution.

[Scuba]

1. The All Volunteer Services. Reinstate the draft, all the wars will be over in six weeks. n/t

[pinboy3niner]

2. The draft didn't end the VN War in six weeks

Before the war ended, more than 17,000 draftees died in Vietnam.

In this case, it looks like an unscrupulous recruiter wrongfully enlisted someone who wasn't eligible for military service. It doesn't look like a return to 'Project 100,000.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000

[Scuba]

3. Hyperbole.

[hack89]

6. Do you support a massive increase in the military and the defense budget?

don't forget that the military is a lot smaller now and the draft pool is much bigger (more population plus drafting women). To make it fair you need to make the military much bigger. If you keep the military the same size then a very small fraction of eligible people will ever serve - how do you make that particular lottery seem fair?

[hack89]

7. Another flaw in your logic

even when there was a draft the military still had a high percentage of volunteers - everyone higher then an corporal had to reenlist at least once. And many first time enlistees were volunteers. The military has no problems now recruiting an all volunteer force - just how many slots will be available for draftees?

[rasputin1952]

4. There should be action agaisnt thr recruiter responsible for...

the enlistment, and whomever administered the ASVAB and physical.

[Fumesucker]

5. But absolutely not against those who pressured these people to do those acts..

That would be going too far, superiors are never responsible for the misconduct of their underlings.

[rasputin1952]

8. The pressure was there, that's a given...

but rarely, if ever, is a "superior" directly involved w/the enlistment process. As w/most things, the individual becomes a number, unseen by a "superior", except a 2nd Lt that will administer the Oath of Enlistment.

The recruiter and a few others would have had direct contact w/the enlistee, before the Oath was even taken, there was a severe breakdown before this individual was even in process.

[MADem]

9. I think I'd vote with the "No, he wasn't" crowd if I were empanelled on that CM.

I'd buy the defense argument, assuming the IQ and the diagnosis panned out, and weren't hyperbolic assessments or claims in an effort to get this kid off. I'd probably be as popular as a fart in church for saying so in a military setting, though, because the military wants to retain jurisdiction over who is, and is not, qualified.

Thing is, I've filled out enough of those Low Quality Recruit/Low Quality Officer reports to know that if you don't get it right from the git-go, you end up with a problem on your hands that someone else has to deal with. The government, and by that I mean the people responsible for enlistment and initial entry training, need to do a better job of weeding out, no matter how painful it might be. "Fuck Up, Move Up" should not be the mantra.

For the government, the case is important in part because of the precedent it will set for future cases in which recruits challenge the validity of their enlistments. The Pentagon wants to ensure that military officials, not state courts, determine enlistment eligibility.

In Fry's case, a California court had concluded that he had developmental disabilities, but the Marines found him competent.

"Congress did not cede determination of the validity of an enlistment contract to a state court's conclusion as to 'capacity' to contract, but rather retained the authority to set its own definition of 'capacity' to enlist," the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals agreed last year in siding with the government


Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/28/128612/was-autistic-man-really-a-marine.html#ixzz1cB2X8EPO